Literary Responses to Darwin in Zola, Hardy, and the Utopian Novel

1 Ineradicable Humanity: Literary Responses to Darwin in Zola, Hardy, and the Utopian Novel Niall Sreenan Centre for Multidisciplinary and Intercultural Inquiry University College London This thesis is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature September, 2016 2 Declaration I, Niall Sreenan, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. Abstract This dissertation is a comparative study of the evolutionary thought of Charles Darwin and a constellation of novels from the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries which examines how these works respond to and explore the existential death blow delivered to humanity by Darwin’s theory of evolution. In doing so, this work joins a vibrant discursive field in literary criticism about the relationship between Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and literature, both in the nineteenth century and beyond. The dominant methodology in this field seeks to illuminate the historical and discursive context in which literary culture and Darwinian science co-existed and focuses on the period contemporaneous with and immediately after the emergence of Darwinian evolutionary science. Building on this methodology, I argue that, as well as recognising the intertextual and historical cross-correspondences between literary writing and Darwin’s theories, it is important and critically fruitful to consider the ways that literary writing supplements Darwin’s thought, submitting it to a range of interrogations, questions, complications, and transformations. I explore how works by Émile Zola stage an inquiry into the relation between scientific objectivity and art and wonder about the possibility of transcending the biological determinism of natural selection; how two works by Thomas Hardy respond to the nihilism of an evolutionary cosmology with a radical vision of Darwinian sexual 3 selection; and how Utopian novels by Samuel Butler, Aldous Huxley, and Michel Houellebecq interrogate the question of individual sovereignty and perfection under rigorous Darwinian materialist law. Throughout these chapters, I work in dialogue with a number of key concepts from critical theory, with a particular focus on the work of Gilles Deleuze. Ultimately, I argue that in the encounter between literature, Darwin’s thought, and philosophy, creative modes of understanding Darwin’s thought are possible – which re-affirm literature’s capacity to supplement scientific thought and the life of humanity itself. 4 Table of Contents Abbreviations ............................................................................................................... 6 Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... 8 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 9 Literature: ‘science with an addition’ ................................................................................... 21 Darwinian Literary Criticism ................................................................................................ 26 Darwin’s theory of evolution as a critical theory ................................................................ 34 Evolution as ‘the war of nature’ ............................................................................................. 41 Chapter 1 –Émile Zola and the ‘War of Nature’ .......................................................... 53 Introduction: Zola, Darwin, and Genealogical Connection ............................................... 54 Biological Determinism in Le Ventre de Paris and L’Œuvre ............................................... 56 A literary dialogue on the war of nature ............................................................................. 67 Deleuzean Heredity and Zola ............................................................................................... 76 “The man who was eaten alive” – Putrid Art and the Crack .............................................. 84 Abjection and Putridity ........................................................................................................ 92 Conclusion: ‘one long argument’ ....................................................................................... 100 Chapter 2 – ‘Relations of the Sexes’: Thomas Hardy’s Evolutionary Meliorism ...... 103 Introduction: Hardy and Darwin, Negation and Plenitude ............................................. 104 Darwinian Pessimism in A Pair of Blue Eyes and The Return of the Native ..................... 114 The Failure of Evolutionary Meliorism: The Darwinian Abyss ......................................... 120 Sexual Selection: Hardy’s ‘Relations of the Sexes’ .............................................................. 130 Subversive Evolutionary Creativity ..................................................................................... 142 Conclusion: Tragedy, Sexuality, and Futurity .................................................................... 155 Chapter 3 – ‘Dreaming of Islands’: Three Darwinian Utopias .................................. 158 Introduction: Desert Islands ............................................................................................... 159 The Utopian Impulse in the Islands of Butler, Huxley, and Houellebecq ...................... 168 The Conflicted Darwinisms of Butler, Huxley, and Houellebecq .................................... 181 Darwinian Contradiction and the Utopian Island ............................................................ 190 The Dialectics of Darwinian Utopias ................................................................................. 200 Conclusion: ‘closing brackets on becoming’ ..................................................................... 209 5 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 212 Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 220 6 Abbreviations The first references to a work in each chapter gives full bibliographical details. Subsequent references are to an abbreviated title; frequently cited works will be incorporated into the text after the first full reference. Works by Charles Darwin: All references to works by Darwin are taken from The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online, ed. by John van Whye, (http://darwin-online.org.uk/) and refer to the first edition of that text, unless otherwise specified. Origin: Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (London: John Murray, 1859). Descent, Vol. 1: Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, 2 vols (London: John Murray, 1871), I. Descent, Vol. 2: Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, 2 vols (London: John Murray, 1871), II. Beagle Voyage: Charles Darwin, Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty’s Ships Adventure and Beagle between the Years 1826 and 1836, Describing Their Examination of the Southern Shores of South America, and the Beagle’s Circumnavigation of the Globe. Journal and Remarks. 1832-1836., ed. by Robert Fitzroy, 3 vols (London: Henry Colburn, 1839), III. Primary works: Germinal: Émile Zola, Germinal, trans. by Peter Collier (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Le Ventre: Émile Zola, The Belly of Paris, trans. by Brian Nelson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). L’Œuvre: Émile Zola, The Masterpiece, trans. by Roger Pearson and Thomas Walton, rev. edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Blue Eyes: Thomas Hardy, A Pair of Blue Eyes, ed. by Alan Manford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). Return: Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native, ed. by Simon Avery (Ontario: Broadview Press, 2013). Erewhon: Samuel Butler, Erewhon, ed. by Peter Mudford, The Penguin English Library, New & rev. edn (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970). 7 Island: Aldous Huxley, Island, ed. by David Bradshaw (New York: Vintage Books, 2005). Possibility: Michel Houellebecq, The Possibility of an Island, trans. by Gavin Bowd (New York: Vintage, 2007). 8 Acknowledgements I owe an immeasurable debt of gratitude to both my PhD supervisors, Timothy Mathews and Elinor Shaffer. Tim’s intellectual generosity and critical acuity have continually been a source of inspiration as well as a challenge. Above all, Tim’s patience and humanity have made what has been a sometimes arduous process seem manageable; I am hugely thankful for his support as well as his example. Equally, I am thankful to Elinor, from whose experience, knowledge, enthusiasm, and considerable academic networking skills I have benefitted enormously. I am grateful to the members and founders of the UCL Society for Comparative Critical Inquiry, on whom various ideas, draft chapters, and conference papers have been tested. More importantly, I would like to thank them for their friendship and for the engrossing chats which have been as influential on my work as our formal exchanges. Similarly, I would like to thank the friends I made during my Master’s degree, whose intellectual example and good humour has been a wonderful source of encouragement and intellectual stimulation. I would also like to thank my parents, Pat and Joan Sreenan. From the very moment I embarked upon the PhD

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